With 10 authors, surely nothing can go wrong. But wait a minute, there's more! Each author only recieved the chapter directly preceding their own, so anything left out of the matrix is gone forever! I'm sure this has never been done before by better artists, or anything. Hay, not even all of the authors are bronies, and yet here we are!
I'm having second thoughts about this, but it's all too late now. Seth's journey in this land of skewed continuity and less-than-proper grammar has already begun, and it's far too late to stop it now. Seth is freed from his prison home by a band of pirates. He then gets drawn into the biggest war Equestria has seen. Can he survive in a world that wants humankind dead, or will he be another fallen warrior on the fields of battle?
These are the people that helped me write this madness:
Will Barger
ColonielQwerty
Technomonkey76
Lightman314
RedXParasite
Isaac Bedard
Katiebaby
Trybien
FriBri
Special thanks to ArronMTurner, TheMrDefaults, KingDuncanII, and Paul Shreve for trying to write, even if you didn't succeed.
You can hear it on Youtube here, although the quality is poor. If you have a better mic and recorded a reading of this story, please send me a message, and I'll link that instead.
This story is also on Google Docs here.
His name was Seth, this was inevitable.
wat
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That was my reaction to this chapter.
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You would be surprised actually. Several of the people that wrote this aren't bronies, and wouldn't make the connection. Hay, Will Barger (author of Chapter 1) wasn't a brony, and he's the one who came up with the name to begin with. Just goes to show what can happen when you let the people loose.
Thanks for the comment too. You're the only one so far, so I'm kind of reliant on you to know what went well, what went wrong, and whether this was even a good idea to begin with until (and if) some others show up in the comments.
3213377 It wasn't bad in fact. I think the downvoters mostly don't understand the point of a story like this. It's supposed to be random, yet maintain some modicum of order despite the randomness.
One of the only complaints I have is somewhere in one of the chapters where the author of that chapter goes through a list of things that happened previously. It seemed like an artificial way to try to maintain continuity; not only did it not work, but that's not the point of this kind of story.
All in all, I enjoyed it. I do think that agreeing on a general topic can be a good thing (specifying that it happens in Equestria for example) so people are on the same page. The single world change from earth to Equestria in this story is fine, but if it gets out of hand it could be pretty crazy. I would maybe suggest that each author can write a short note to the next author, with the requirement that the note doesn't contain any specific information, just generic notes to help the story not deviate too drastically. For example, the fact that Seth was guilty would not be allowed in the note, because that's one of the details that should be maintained some other way. But a note that the story has already changed universes once may be included, mostly to hint that it might be prudent to keep the story in the current universe for the time being. In that case, it would be up to the authors to not abuse the system. It's like metagaming - it's up to the players to be cool about what information they act on, even if they know more than their character should.
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I'm glad that you enjoyed it. I admit that I enjoyed it myself until the end, which I found a bit over-the-top, but hay. By that time, I really had no influence on anything (and, in fact, my chapter didn't make any lasting marks at all. Even the two characters I formed back then in chapter 2 didn't last for very long). I was just the one that checked each chapter for any glaring issues (one chapter had to be seriously reworked in fact, as that chapter started in a completely different location than the chapter before it), fixed grammar errors (the last chapter in particular was just spammed with commas), and kept everything running smoothly between all the members.
I myself noticed that section in Chapter 7 where Isaac Bedard did the recap when he first finished it. I really didn't like that bit at all, but once more, it was just out of my hands to change. There's always gonna be that one person that tries to be too orderly, and Isaac was that guy. I did like him pointing out the short-term memory loss, a subtle nod across the 4th wall, but the total recap was a bit too much.
The main thing with this was the lack of rules attached, which besides the whole seeing-only-the-chapter-before-yours thing amounts to a very short list:
Keep it PG-13 or better
That was literally all the "rules" there were. We did at least try to find a theme: Minecraft, ponies, a wide variety of popular games, but there were always about 3 or 4 other people that knew too little on a particular game or idea to go through with it. Therefore, we just let Will (slated to go second originally) start it off, as I had no clue what to write about that would work with everyone else. I have to admit that the group may have been a bit too diverse, but I don't think that turned out to be too bad in the end.
I probably will do it again sometime, although I doubt I'll use the notes idea you suggested. Just like with the total recap, it's kind of the point not to know any of that information, and I honestly would expect quite a few authors to abuse it with impunity.
As to the downvoters, I'll admit that they kinda bummed me out at first. Within the first 2 minutes it was public, I had 2 downvotes already. Whether they were trolling or didn't know what they were reading, I still wished that I knew who those people were so I could try to sort it out with them. Oh well. Maybe the next story will turn out better.